I will try to build a Land Rover military vehicle from Hobby Boss. WMIK stands for Weapons Mount Installation Kit, which has a mechanism on the rear ring mount that allows for machine guns and anti-tank missiles. This kit is a vehicle equipped with Milan anti-tank missiles.
The first step is to assemble the engine.
The chassis frame also has a lot of parts. Things are going well because the fit is not bad.
I’m unsure how to fix the engine, so I haven’t bonded it yet. The bonnets and left and right fenders are divided into parts, which is confusing. The chassis frame looks thick and sturdy. Military vehicles must be designed to handle any rough road.
There were four rubber tires. I think it’s a good-quality rubber part. It doesn’t seem to melt if you stick it to plastic like the old Italeri tires.
(2023/01/28)
Once the tires are glued together, the chassis is almost complete. It’s pretty tiny. It’s bigger than the Willis Jeep and Shubim Wagen in Tamiya’s kit, a compact vehicle.
Fuel tank parts under the loading platform.
The driver’s seat is an ordinary passenger car seat. It’s a lot of machine gun ammunition and hard work assembling 12 boxes. It’s messy, so I put everything in a basket and fixed it with glue. I don’t make car models, so these parts feel new.
The car body is completed from the rear. It’s supposed to run like crazy off-road, so they probably pay attention to durability as much or more than rally cars. That said, I only roughly assemble frame-like parts.
The frame parts were carefully wrapped in cushioning, but one was broken. Does that mean it’s such a fragile part? The rest can be done by assembling the front half.
(2023/01/30)
Amazingly, the engine part is reproduced correctly. If I’m not careful, the slightly protruding part will interfere with the hood. The hood had to be drilled before it could be glued.
For now, the Land Rover assembly is complete. There are many more parts than WWII cars, Jeeps and Cubelwagen. The missile launcher and what appear to be its ammunition case have not yet been glued together due to possible interference in the placement of the figure. Or maybe the difference in the concept of the kit is because the above is a Tamiya kit, and this is a Hobby Boss.
It would be a stack solution during operations in the desert. The side of the vehicle is equipped with a board that can be pulled up if the tire goes under the sand.
The mount part of the primary weapon seems very weak, but I wonder whether I don’t care much about it because it is a recoilless gun.
An etched part is used for the front part, and the mesh part is thin and strong, giving a sense of precision.
(2023/02/01)
I painted the headlights with masking sol in preparation for painting. There are also clear parts at the rear, so masking is the same.
I used black as a primer. There are so many deep areas this time that it’s hard to blow the airbrush. It’s easier to paint with a tight outer covering like a tank.
Where I can paint in dark yellow as assigned, I use an airbrush wherever I can.
There are also a lot of parts on the underside of the car. Maybe I can keep it black, but I just painted it in the primary color.
Only the rocket launcher part is the olive drive, for some reason. I guess all the ready-made rocket launchers are olive drive at the factory.
I used a bit of alcohol to add a top coat of buff to the modern vehicle because dark yellow still gives the impression of a German army. Weathering would calm it down a bit, but I don’t know.
This vehicle did not have decals such as unit marks. Just a meter panel, maybe a caution mark like No Fire allowed, and a sticker on the front emblem.
It isn’t easy to paint detailed and deep areas, such as seat painting with a brush.
(2023/02/10)
The military Land Rover is finally complete. When I look at the vehicles in action, they are pretty dirty, so this is about right. I may have done more damage.
The anti-tank recoil gun is the primary weapon, and there are other machine guns. It seems to be easy to maneuver and high in combat power. The most challenging part of the assembly is where the parts with bonnets, side fenders, and front headlights are put together tightly with no gaps when glued together. The parts fit well, so they will be clean if carefully built. I strengthened it with a lot of superglue from the back.
The angle of the friend-foe identification panel attached to the left rear of the vehicle was not confirmed in the instruction manual, but it was like this in the actual vehicle. Does it work upside down?
It doesn’t have a handle because I decided to let the figure hold it in the middle of painting it. Please look at the examples of modern British infantry on the next page if you like.
In 2021, British troops left Afghanistan, so there may have been more than a small number of vehicle transfers to the Taliban.
I like the etched part on the front headlight cover, which I installed at the last minute because it gives quite a sense of precision. Also, the clear parts at the front and rear of the vehicle are painted clear orange or clear red for a nice little accent. I want to build such a small vehicle in the future.
(2023/02/12)
